The 2009 installment of Artscape is coming up this weekend. At America’s Largest Public Arts Festival, there’s a little something for everyone (and we mean it, everyone and your mom will be there, all sweaty and eating funnel cakes).

And our homie Nickodemus is taking a hiatus from his usual gig with Turntables on the Hudson at New York’s always sizzling Water Taxi Beach to get Artscape’s afternoon crowd bumping from the Main Stage on Sunday.(more…)

Apparently there was a sustainable dinner series at the aquarium, which is super cool but disappointing because according to Black Coffee and a Donut, they just had the last one. The Fresh Thoughts dinners included dolphin shows and squid exhibits.

Per the Black Coffee gals, who we recently bumped into at Joe Squared, the foodie mecca pizza joint (a rare string of words) on North Avenue, tilapia = Veganfish:

Tilapia, which is farm-raised in Maryland, “is an herbivore so it is low down on the food chain. Lower down on the food chain means fewer fish went into creating the fish you are eating … for every pound of tuna you eat (which is high on the food chain), that represents 10 pounds of squid.”

Baltimore City Police were watching a guy on Prestman Street in West Baltimore for a while. They figured Mr. Trenell Murphy was dealing, especially when he chucked a trash bag full of coke bags (or some paraphernalia) out the window of his truck. The plucky gumshoes assumed the truck was being used in a crime. But how did they finally make the bust?

The detectives got a lucky break. One recounted his discovery to the City Paper’s Mobtown Beat:

“He [Murphy] told me, ‘I have a spot up the street where I can take you to where there is 40 keys [kilograms] of cocaine’ He accompanied us to the truck and said, ‘It’s in there, it’s in the bed of the truck.’ ”

“After taking Murphy into custody, the detectives searched his black Chevrolet truck parked outside the house and in its bed found “approximately forty (40) wrapped kilogram-sized bricks of suspected cocaine,” the complaint states, which also describes them as being wrapped in newspaper.”

The paper also reported that, “Directly across the street from the house is a flashing Baltimore Police Department blue-light camera, a device meant to serve as an investigative tool and deterrent to crime.”

More importantly, what does 90 pounds of coke look like? Can you build a sandcastle with it? Can you make a fort with those bricks? Do you dive into snowy piles, like on Ducktails?

8) Patriotic visitors strolling the harbor observe a 15-foot cell phone, supposedly the world’s largest, thanks to fireworks sponsor CricKet. Wild rock music plays, people are invited to make the “biggest call of their lives”

7) To witness the Harbor fireworks display, multilingual families camp out 10 hours before showtime on the lawn within ear blast by Poison from the Hard Rock Cafe loudspeakers. The saree-clad Desi camp settled in opposite the aquarium where bullhorns shepherded sunstroked parents and children through a multitude of lines.

5) Fort McHenry revelers commemorate the day with fife and drum music, cannon-firing, poetry reading, musket salute for 18 states, period games, feasting and historic toasts… and hanging King George in effigy.